Revisiting "Snow Falling on Cedars"

I do love great cinematography. It was years ago when I saw “Snow Falling on Cedars” in the theater. Recently I watched it again. While I did not particular care for the plot, I loved those great images of heavy white snow falling on cedars. I felt as if I could almost touch the snowflakes, smell the cedars and feel the chilly air.

The reason why I would even bother to watch it in the theater when it was first released was partly due to the actor Ethan Hawke, mostly because he was in one of my favorite movies “Dead Poets Society”. It helps that he in real life is about my age. I can’t say that I liked “Reality Bites”, but I found “Gattaca” inspiring, “Great Expectations” interesting, and “Snow Falling on Cedars” charming. In almost all those movies, he plays characters that have a near-obsessive love and singular devotion for the female protagonist. I found that utterly enthralling, if a bit crazy. It was what I loved in a movie character - steadfast and blinding love.

Over 10 years later, as I watched “Snow Falling on Cedars” again, I could no longer appreciate the obsession as much as I did before. I wonder if it has to do with my current profession, which has forced me to be less sentimental in general. Or perhaps it is the simple effect of age?

Come to think of it, I do miss the years when I was foolishly sentimental – those were years when everything remained a possibility, when nothing was certain, and when I felt that my youth alone would make me invincible.

Perhaps I am fooling myself – I am never rid of my sentimentality, no matter how many companies I start...